7 Great Pieces of Career Advice
No One Ever Told You
The
best advice for those looking to achieve great things is often the least
repeated.
Career advice is in no short
supply. In
fact, you could probably spend the duration of your working life simply reading
through the tips and advice already online. But as in all areas of life, the
more common something is, generally speaking, the lower its value.
Many oft
repeated truisms are more about wish fulfillment than reality (sorry peddlers
of endless, uncritical "follow your
passion!" posts). Plus, tips that everyone and their mother (and their college career
counselor) knows are unlikely to give you an edge over the competition. So what
are the true hidden gems of career advice, the truths that few people
are willing to say out loud that can actually transform a mediocre career into
a rockstar one?
That's
what a someone on question-and-answer site Quora wanted to know recently,
asking: "What are a few unique pieces of
career advice that nobody ever mentions?" The community
responded with plenty of uncommon, thought-provoking advice.
1. Doing your
job well is not enough.
Being
excellent at your job is a surefire way to get ahead, right? Nope, say several
responders, including Victor Wong, CEO of PaperG. "Most people assume just
doing their current assigned job well is enough--so many associates at law
firms think doing all the paperwork and litigation properly is the road to
partnership, and many PR account executives think that getting a few articles
written about their clients will earn them a promotion," he writes, but
"becoming a principal, partner, or senior executive with P&L-level
responsibility requires a completely separate set of skills from entry and
mid-level jobs."
How do
you make that leap? "To make the big jump to the next level, they're
really being benchmarked on their ability to deliver future value to the firm
in ways that are not taught or explained to them: chiefly how much business are
they are able to bring in," he asserts. "People who can think of what
to do and deliver are the ones who ultimately are more likely to get promoted
to the top levels."
Another
anonymous poster agrees: "You don't become a star doing your job. You
become a star making things happen."
2. Who you work
for is hugely important.
We all
wish we lived in a world where who you know matters less than what you can do,
but that's often not reality, and not always for unhealthy reasons. Knowing the
best in the business often means you've worked with the best, and people
rightly admire that.
"You
don't have to be passionate about the product you are selling. You don't have
to be in the most glamorous industry. You don't have to work for the company
with the best 'brand' identity or reputation in your chosen field," insists
Jeremy Boudinet, director of marketing for startup Ambition. What does matter
is who you've worked with.
"Few
things are as valuable as going and working for somebody that is going to want
to teach you anything and everything they know. You'll experience tremendous
personal and professional growth if you have the best person mentoring you," he says, so
"figure out where the absolute best person to work for would be, and go work
for them."
3. ... So is
where you work.
Just like
who you work for can deeply affect the fate of your career, where you work also
has a massive impact. Just saying, 'I want to work in software or sales,' isn't
enough. Nor, as Boudinet point out, is it enough just to fill your resume with
impressive company names. Your destiny is influenced greatly by the destiny of
the particular organization that employs you. Don't take a job with just any
old company because it's in the right sector or impresses your friends.
"Your
career is a boat and it is at the mercy of tides. No matter how talented you
are it's a lot harder to break out in a sluggish situation/hierarchy/economy
than a go-go environment. Even if you're a superstar at Sluggish Co., your
upside trajectory (more often than not) is fractional to what an average/below
average employee achieves at Rocket Ship Co," says an anonymous poster
with the most up-voted answer.
4. Being seen as
super busy isn't always a good thing.
Think
high achievers work endless hours and are continuously busy? Think again, writes Mira
Zaslove, director of international sales and trading at FabExchange.
"Ironically the busier you appear, often the less you will move up. I've
seen smart and dedicated employees fail to get promoted, because they have
taken on too much, are working too hard, and appeared too frazzled," she
reports. "If you appear stressed, people will think you aren't prepared to
take on more, and you'll miss opportunities for new and innovative
projects."
5. Take a
tour.
When
plotting your first (or next) big career move, many of us think very
abstractly, musing in solitude or in front of Google about the joys of our
supposed dream jobs. But the truth is you can't decide on a career without
seeing the day-to-day reality of where
and how you work--the concrete truth rather than the imagined reality. Don't make
decisions without actually going and seeing for yourself.
Alek
Mirkovich, founder of campayn.com, once thought becoming an air traffic
controller was a great idea, but then he took a tour of where he would actually
be working. "Every single guy was BALD! Playing around with a simulator is
fun, but apparently the real thing is stressful. Within 30 seconds I knew I
wasn't going to be signing up for this!" he remembers.
6. Don't hide
your failures.
Failures are seen less as a
signal of incompetence and more as a sign that you're willing to take a
risk and innovate, according to Zaslove. "Your team will respect you and
your career will accelerate if people understand what you are doing and that
you are taking risks. Most people do not view someone as credible if they are
giving advice and recommendations, but not walking the walk," she claims.
"If you show that you are willing to take risks, and publicly falter, your
team will feel confident taking risks too. Lead by example."
7. Execution
matters more than plans or advice.
Many
people are looking for the magic recipe of how to make their career take off,
but many of the responders agree that there are some serious limits to what
other people can tell you. "Advice (like ideas) is not in short supply,
there is plenty of it going around," writes coach Darren Beattie, for
instance. "It's not really the advice in the long run that matters, it's
the execution of the advice by the person being advised. The greatest advice
ever in the history of the human race is absolutely useless if you act/execute
on none of it."
Or to put
it another way, there's no real roadmap that
you can blindly follow. The trick is figuring out what to apply and what to
ignore for your own personal situation. That same popular anonymous responder
sums this idea up well: "Career tracks and meritocracies don't exist: Your
career is not a linear, clearly defined trajectory."
BY JESSICA STILLMAN
http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/7-great-pieces-of-career-advice-no-one-ever-told-you.html?cid=em01014week29c
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